While both copyright and trademark are forms of intellectual property protection, they protect different types of intellectual property. Copyright is geared toward literary and artistic works, such as books and software. A trademark protects items that help define a company brand, such as its logo.

These two areas of protection overlap when protecting your rights to a design. A trademark protects a design that identifies your business’s goods or services. You might trademark a design for a logo, a label or product packaging. A copyright, on the other hand, protects original works of authorship. You automatically have a copyright in any design you create and fix in a tangible medium. Unlike trademark protection, you do not need to use a design in business to have copyright protection, but you must have authored the design. Therefore, a design used to identify a brand and be registerable as a trademark is likely protected under copyright as well.